Sunday, July 09, 2017

The INF Treaty is About to Collapse

The situation with the INF Treaty is getting worse pretty rapidly. U.S. Congress is moving to include what is known as "INF Treaty Preservation Act" in the National Defense Authorization bill. Judging by the language of the bill, its authors believe that the best way to preserve the INF Treaty is to join Russia in killing it (and to kill the New START extension for good measure). The current version of the bill would establish a U.S. program to develop an INF-range ground-launched cruise missile development program. Other proposals have been circulating as well - the Senate version of the INF Preservation Act mentions active defenses, counterforce capabilities, or things like "facilitating the transfer to allied countries of missile systems with [INF] ranges" (I am told that the plan is that the missiles would come from Israel). And it's not just Congress -- the Pentagon has already developed a set of five or so options that would address the INF violation (Israeli missiles is reportedly one of them).

In short, the process that would lead to destruction of the INF Treaty has been set in motion and at this point fewer and fewer people mention the option of resolving the issue through a discussion with Russia. In fact, a lot of people do not particularly care about the details of the alleged violation or its real military significance. For them, it is very convenient to start with a "blatant treaty violation" and move on to their favorite cause, be that missile defense, dismantlement of New START, or something else.